THE ROLE OF TOPOGRAPHIC AMPLIFICATION ON THE INITIATION OF ROCK SLOPES FAILURES DURING EARTHQUAKES

摘要

Earthquake-triggered landslides are an important secondary effect of strong shaking. Such phenomena have occurred during a large number of eartliquakes and have resulted in significant loss of life. Seismically induced slope failures have occurred in both rock and soil masses, and had sizes ranging from a few individual blocks up to several million cubic meters in volume. Since the mid 1960s numerous methods of analysis have been developed to assess the risk posed by these hazards, however, such investigations normally use a simplified form of ground motion input such as peak ground acceleration, or Arias Intensity (I,,). These take no account of potential amplification effects associated with steep topography. In this paper the mechanisms of topographic amplification are considered, along with the potential impacts on the stability of slopes during large earthquakes. The key uncertainties have been outlined along with some of the major research questions for the future.